Former US First Lady Jill Biden has weighed in on her husband’s disastrous performance at the first 2024 presidential debate that eventually ended his re-election bid.
According to Al Jazeera, in an interview preview published online on Wednesday, May 27, the television programme CBS Sunday Morning pressed the former first lady for her response to that moment.
When the host, Rita Braver, asked her if she was “horrified,” Biden responded, “I wasn’t horrified. I was frightened, because I had never, ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never.”
Braver then asked Jill Biden what she thought happened on June 27, 2024, when her husband, then-incumbent Joe Biden, took the debate stage opposite his Republican rival Donald Trump.
“I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke’, and it scared me to death,” Jill Biden said.
Critics have largely pointed to the debate performance as tanking Joe Biden’s campaign for a second term and fuelling rumours about his declining health.
On stage, Biden appeared to walk stiffly and struggled to maintain his train of thought. At one point, he trailed off, only to suddenly announce, “We finally beat Medicare.”
The Democrat was 81 years old at the time. The following year, he was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer.
